Deconstruction of the Runaway "MFR" Thread

[Walt Fritz]

Diane,

However useful "MFR" may have started out as a technical application, its theory and even its very name has become completely useless with all the additions, and "improvements" it has attracted, enough baggage to pretty much sink its future for "scientific development." No matter what people try to do with it they will forever bump into puseudoscientific walls that have closed around it.

Your view from atop the mountain must make you dizzy. If you feel that your audience here represents the whole of the therapy community at-large, must less the population of patients out there, you are delusional.
By the way, after reading your long, but quite good, description of a typical Simple Contact/ideomotor action session on another thread here, I felt that it was a shame that you limited your MFR coursework to the intro class. What you described is quite similar to the basics of unwinding, though truly only the tip of the iceberg. Though maybe it is better that you did not take any more MFR classes. Though, I'm glad you are given a say in who gets frozen from this site. Dave sends his thanks.

Barrett,
I must admit that you seem a bit arbitrary and capricious in doling out the hats. Got that crack legal team of yours investigating the legality of posting those chat line posts? Funny how that student of yours who gave you Dave's posts failed to give their name. I suppose that same person supplied you with all of the rest of the posts that you've used over the years. Did you really read the Terms of Agreement when you originally signed up for the MFR chat line?

Cheers,
Walt

[nari]

Walt

Thinking folk tend not to go swimming around under the visible fraction of an iceberg. It has a tendency to roll over, and one doesn't really know what's there, anyway. Better to stay with the known and the visible, despite the excitement of swimming in the darkness.

Nari

[Tim]

I would like to share a personal experience and see what comments come back. Having started doing MFR about 20 years ago, I was having much better clinical results than I had ever had before. Then I went to MFR III.
After that, I stopped doing MFR for 2-3 years. I have never really tried to explain to anyone why MFR III did that to me, because I don't know how to really explain what happened. But I want to give it a bit of a go here.
When I went to Barrett's seminar 2/1/06, I told him that SC sounded a lot like MFR. He was not happy with that comment . He said something like SC is nothing like a seance. Then I realized that he already had some understanding of what my experience with MFR III was like for me.

There were two massage therapists in the MFR III class who were spirit mediums. John asked them to give us a demonstration. I cannot explain in words what happened after that. All I can say is it was chaos. If there is an English word that comes close to explaining it, Maybe "seance" is it.

I already was aware of "direction of energy" as a component of how John facilitated MFR, and I used that imagery in my own treatments as a way of focusing and tuning-out everything else so that I could sense fully what was going on beneath my hands. Do I believe I was actually directing energy? No. Did it help me sense what I was feeling, and thus enable me to be more effective with MFR. Yes.

But John brought more unscientifically founded New Age ideas into the original concept of MFR -- or at least acknowledged those that others broght with them, and never disparaged anything, including keeping a crystal under the treatment table.

There is nothing, in my opinion, that keeps John's method of MFR on a scientific foundation. MFR III literally scared me away. I was having good results with it, but if what happened at the MFR III seminar is what MFR is, then I wasn't doing it any more. I realized a couple of years later, that that was somewhat immature of me, and I decided I can use MFR as a purely manual techinique without adding anything else to it. And so that is what I did.

I still questioned often how the manual therapy I was doing could possibly achieve the results that I would get. Anatomy and physiology did not explain it, not even an understanding of the fascial system and its interconnectedness.

What an awesome experience it was for me to go to Barrett's seminar and learn about ideamotion, and learn very clearly how one can explain the phenomena I was seeing as a function of the nervous system, beginning with the stretch-activated sodium ion channels in the skin, and how even the SC theory fits with what we know of embyology.

Through the adjustments I have made in my hands-on therapy in the few weeks since Barrett's class, I am having better results. I look forward to refining this in the months to come.

I am grateful for finally receiving a scientifically meaningful explanation for the phenomena we see. Results should be better when we have a true working knowledge behind what we are attempting to achieve.

"Enlightenment is the ego's greatest disappointment."

[Pia]

Diane: "However useful "MFR" may have started out as a technical application, its theory and even its very name has become completely useless with all the additions, and "improvements" it has attracted, enough baggage to pretty much sink its future for "scientific development." No matter what people try to do with it they will forever bump into puseudoscientific walls that have closed around it"

Say's who?? What baggage??? Diane, it really is amazing how a woman of such perceived intelligence can stoop so low. Is it really not important to you that I am not the only patient/client who tells you and yours that this is an intervention that is not going to sink BECAUSE IT WORKS - CONTRARY TO SO MUCH ELSE IN THERAPY. But on the other hand I do not know why I even use energy on this because unless YOU WANT to understand what I am trying to tell you it is not going to happen, is it. As a therapist is it not the best of all when a patient improves from being a non-functional pain ridden person to a happy a functional individual with your help - or have you never experience that as a PT. Anyway, your loss and your patients’ loss I suppose.

[Barrett Dorko]

Walt,

I don't give out hats to people who insult my friends or denigrate their opinions by implying that they're living atop some mythical mountain. How's that?

Diane has been working daily with patients far longer than you, and her opinions are carefully and fully formed as the end result of study. You might not be familiar with that complete process.

Now you imply I've done something illegal by re-posting Dave's description of how to "dialogue" according to Barnes. He's not proud to share this for some reason? Don't you think all of us truly concerned about our patients should be doing this? Do we have to $it at the feet of Barnes before we dare?

I think you're lucky I don't show up and take a hat you already have away.

[Walt Fritz]

Tim,
I'm glad you found an avenue to make sense of things. Combining many modalities into our own work makes us all unique. MFR III can be quite scary, though powerful to many. As for John not disparaging even a person who chooses to keep crystals under their table...I think you said it all right there. Who's place is it to discredit what one feels as useful? No one should tell you or me that what we feel is important should not be utilized. There is so much out there beyond what we know as fact. Call it "New Age", or whatever one might like. But accepting what is important to oneself is vital. maybe you saw that in John. As for the scary stuff in MFR III, read into Stanislav Groff's work. (OK, here is the place where all of the rest of you normally chime in...save it, it gets very boring). This may help explain to you what occurred on the evening session of this class. It was very powerful for me, and I know that science would have a hard time explaining what my partner and I went through that night. As I said, I'm glad that you found your comfort zone. MFR practitioners find their own as well.

Walt

[nari]

Tim

Thank you for your post. It is very valuable.

It encapsulates a lot of sneaking suspicions we had anyway about the MFR course and its goals. Maybe those who just do the first bit and go away won't be infected too much by pseudoscience and mumbo jumbo.

It is paramount to have a logical and appropriate explanation behind what we learn; especially if we are in the field of managing patients and their basic welfare with regards to their presenting health problems. It doesn't have to be a proven-beyond-doubt thing (nothing is, anyway, except death and taxes) but it must fit with what is known about the brain/body.

Nari

[Walt Fritz]

Barrett,
No, I simply asked if you read the Terms of Acceptance to the MFR chat line. I did and I'm not sure if reporting quotes that members made on a chat line that has many restrictions on their use is allowed.

I think you're lucky I don't show up and take a hat you already have away.

Oh, I get it, you don't call it the BULLYpulpit for nothing! If someone calls you on something you do not like, you resort to threats. As for denigrating opinions, wouldn't your kettle be black by now?

Walt

[Diane]

Pia, stoop low? Huh?
You missed the point again. You keep wanting to retain the whole gestalt of it instead of sifting out the bits that might actually be useful from all the meme packaging that surrounds them.

I think you are right, you're wasting your time. As a therapist I'll continue to keep my patients happy without putting crystals under the bed etc., or feeding them a belief system which many of them may not want to swallow.. I'll give them factual education with their hands-on instead. I'll continue to tell them stories about how the brain works, how pain works, draw them diagrams of brains and spinal cords and nerves and goofy gingerbread shaped bodies surrounding them. They can get their crystal energy therapy elsewhere.

[Diane]

Good story Tim, glad your good sense and instinctive movement made you run in the opposite direction, fast. Walt, the internet/list serves/forums/blogs are not private. I don't get what you don't get about that. Your fortune cookie says, "Give up."

[Barrett Dorko]

Why would you suggest I contact a lawyer if not because you thought I might have done something illegal?

I also think you have that kettle thing completely screwed up. However, I do think what you said makes more sense than MFR theory.

That was a joke Walt, in case you didn't get it. You obviously mistook my last one for a threat so I thought I'd make this one clear.

[Walt Fritz]

Barrett,

Apology accepted.

Walt

[Jon Newman]

Walt, doesn't denigrating something have an element of unfairness involved in the act? Where is the unfairness is thoughtful criticism? On the other hand you seem to be focused on disparaging Barrett and others because they offer criticism in the first place. Dave at least attempted to criticize theory. However, unlike others' criticism of MFR and its claims, he struggled to bring up anything of importance. Of course then he went all ad hominem.

[Walt Fritz]

Jon,
You are right, one one sense. But I am just fighting ad hominem with ad hominem.
Barrett:

The “Renegade” in the title is a Native American persecuted and nearly drowned by “the white man” in one of Barnes’ many past life regressions, and he is bent upon revenge. In the present life, this book seems to be his most effective tactic. I know I was certainly ready to surrender early on. But as the Billy Jack movies prove, there’s an audience for just about anything out there, and when a leader appears, followers will suspend reason for the comfort of belief, especially if they are promised power and secret knowledge. Leaders alienated from society have used this formula for many generations. Maybe the author of this book learned it centuries ago.

(from Dr. Dolittle)

Barnes proposes that what he refers to as “quantum mechanics” (I put it in quotations because it is not evident to me that he understands what the term actually means)

(from Not in Kansas Anymore)

This stands apart from "thoughtful criticism". And, as to "bringing up anything of importance", the cement has hardened on your views that anything we have said has any importance.

Hatfully Hoping,
Walt

[Jon Newman]

Thanks for the quotes Walt. Those examples, while hilarious, don't add up to an ad honimen logical fallacy. Knowing that now, perhaps you'll change your tactics.